In areas where corn is one if not the most popular row crops, it is common knowledge that one of the gravest problems faced by the corn farmer is rootworms. Rootworms infest the fields in which corn is grown and use the roots of the corn plant as food. The rootworm often will cause severe damage to the root of a starting plant and stunt the plant's growth, significantly decreasing yield. Also, rootworm damage decreases the yield by causing a phenomenon known as lodging. Lodging is caused by the corn plant becoming weak at its base where the root spreads out into the soil. As the plant becomes heavier as it matures, it may begin leaning at an acute angle to the ground. This is particularly troublesome in areas that are susceptible to high winds. The high winds cause even more acute lodging, and in some cases may completely blow the plant over. As a result, with the plant leaning at a highly acute angle or perhaps completely blown over, it cannot be combined thus decreasing overall yield. Thus, it can be seen that rootworm is a common problem for corn fields.
The state of the art technology involves treating the field during planting with insecticides in order to inhibit rootworm. The problem of rootworm is especially acute in fields which are planted year after year with corn only, as opposed to rotating corn with other crops such as soybeans or alfalfa. Common insecticides applied during planting in order to effectively treat or inhibit rootworm are sold under the trademarks Difonate.RTM., Counter.RTM. and Lorsban.RTM.. Such chemical controls for rootworm increase the expense of corn crop somewhere between $8 and $12 per acre. Also, there are significant environmental problems that potentially exist with chemical insecticide treatment. For example, it is well known that insecticides may have some carcinogen effect, and may have a significant deleterious effect on ground water.
Thus, while it may be possible by chemical insecticide treatment to effectively control rootworm, the control itself has its own undesirable side effects, namely significantly increased cost per acre for planting of the crop, and the significant risk of pollution of ground water, and finally the hazard of handling chemical insecticides, some of which are known to be carcinogenic.
It therefore can be seen that there is a real and continuing need for an effective way of treating rootworm to inhibit rootworm by a wholly natural means which has little or no hazards for handling, which uses only natural nonpolluting ingredients, and which has a low cost per acre.
It is a primary objective of this invention to satisfy the above need.